Teryl Austin hoping to recreate his epic Lions debut with Bengals

Way back in 2014, a former defensive backs coach named Teryl Austin joined the Detroit Lions as defensive coordinator and led the unit to one of the NFL’s best seasons that year.

Now Austin aims to do the same quick turnaround for the Cincinnati Bengals.

At his introductory press conference Thursday after being hired by Marvin Lewis and the Bengals front office, Austin told reporters familiarity with the defense here played a big role in his coming to town — as did the talent in place.

“Like Marvin said, you want to be somewhere where you have an opportunity to win and don’t have to overhaul things,” Austin said. “When we came to Detroit, I was coming out of Baltimore, which was based out of an “under front” system. Then we got to Detroit, and they had a 4-3 front, and we had a lot of good players. So, what I did was adapt what we did and tried to use the players to the best of their abilities. We had a very successful year that first year we went in there, and it was really strong. We were trying to do what they were doing (previously), but trying and do it better.”

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Austin arrived in Detroit and built his 4-3 around two key centerpieces — defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh and linebacker DeAndre Levy. Others such as Darius Slay and Ziggy Ansah were beginning to blossom as well.

The numbers? Austin’s unit in his debut season ranked second by only permitting 300.9 yards per game. It ranked third in points per game at 17.6. It slotted top 15 against the pass, ranked first overall at 69.3 rushing yards per game allowed and tallied 42 sacks, 20 interceptions and 11 forced fumbles.

Fast forward to 2018, where Austin gets an elite interior presence with Geno Atkins, strong edge rushers with Carlos Dunlap and Carl Lawson, an elite linebacker in Vontaze Burfict and a strong overall secondary boasting a potential top-10 cornerback by the name of William Jackson.

If Austin can arrive and tweak enough to provide the Bengals a similar boost to the one he gave Detroit, his long pursuit of a head-coaching gig won’t last much longer.

And the Bengals, should the offense live up to its end of the deal, could go places in a hurry.